Safe
by Ardespuffy
Summary: Arles season, episode 19, Geist's Island. It's nice to find out that you're not alone... [HyogaxShun, Hyoga's POV]


**Title**: Safe

**Author**: Ardespuffy

**Disclaimer**: alright, I have to admit it. Saint Seiya is not mine. Not at all. Besides, if it was, I'd have put up Hyoga and Shun together since the very first episode, so I wouldn't be here by now, filling Word pages as a possessed fangirl…

**Pairing**: Shun/Hyoga (Andromeda/Crystal) once again, this time Hyoga's POV

**Rating**: K

**Subject**: set during Arles season episode 19, "Geist's Island", when Shun helps an exhausted Hyoga walking. It's nice to find out that you're not alone…

**Genre**: introspective

**Warnings**: one-shot, shonen-ai (just implied)

I slip down the drop.

Weak. Helpless. Too tired to feel the spiky rocks scratching my armour.

The warm brushing, though, is reassuring.

I get a glimpse of a spark. The smell of metal. Whether it's the chrome of my cloth or the plasma of my blood, I can't say this by now. But at the end – at the very end, at the end of the valley, at the end of the peak, at the end of the ocean – does it even matter?

Hot spines run down my arms. I watch them tremble. What an odd thing. I come from Siberia. I never tremble.

More sparks. The squealing of metal. The squealing of days – days that pass yet never go by. More rock through the fingers, under the palms, and the corns, and the sweat, and the blood, and the squealing of bronze and time, and spines of fire in the heart of glass. The head spinning around. Lips moving, dancing. Try to communicate. Maybe they make it, maybe they don't. But at the end – at the end of the outfall, at the end of the crater, at the end of the hell – does it even matter?

I just have to release the grip – but am I really clung? That's weird, 'cause I feel like I'm soaring. Like I was part of the wind, or of the snow that doesn't fall enough in this place. Part of the ice flakes that hit merciless, and toughen or kill you – it's all up to you. Part of a severe voice that brings along days of another life. Voice of a shadow master, shadow as cold as unforgotten eyes.

Aquarius Camus, supreme mentor… what would you think of me now?

And in a second the last handhold folds up, and this body that doesn't belong to me slips down, down, down, ready to fall, ready to leave, ready to end.

End up to you.

Your slim body, so strong right now, stops me from falling, and suddenly everything makes sense.

As in external point of view, I can see myself, Cygnus Hyoga, brave Zodiac Saint, desperately clung to a chain – _**your**_ chain, me lame – not to fall into the abyss. And your arms that, ready – despite the trouble of keeping us all hanged on to the cliff – open up wide to welcome me and stop the fall of a broken swan.

I wish I could say I'm sorry for dropping onto your body this way, as heavy as a weight to carry during the steep rise. I wish I could say I'm sorry, but I just can't. Because for once, for the very first time since… that day… there's someone watching my back again.

Though this time I'm not letting it happen. I'm not letting you end up as Isaac did.

_I won't let you let me, nor I'll let m__e let you_.

That's puzzled thinking, grammatically incorrect, lacking of a true beginning or a true end; but that's all I can set while, leaning on your cozy chest, I feel myself being carried to the above, to the final goal.

It's calming hearing you pant for the effort. It seems to tell you're not forgetting me, this empty shell you bring on your shoulders. This app of ice and blood that, for the first time in ages, allows itself to get the illusion – ever so sweet, ever so real – of not being alone.

I'm a stalagmite torn out of its cave.

I can only thaw.

Melt into you, into the heat you radiate, into your scent, into your taste, into that unique mix of essences that hereafter I'll know as "home".

I hate that hero attitude that makes me let go of you, just to find myself drowning in a pond of self-pity; proud enough, dumb enough to turn out to be self-satisfaction.

It's nice to play the noble kind, for once. I'm sick of seeing the others do it in my place.

Oh, this is bullshit. I love to rely on someone else's bravery, take advantage of that lame swagger to do what I've always done, take care of myself.

Nonetheless, now there's you. And I got somebody to take care of. Somebody I don't want to be a burden to.

I hate that hero attitude that makes me let go of you, but I'm oddly proud of it.

I wonder if you're proud of me.

I keep staring as you run away, the coils of your chain sensually floating in the air. That's right, sensually. I must have knocked my head on the rocks…

I see you fading out of view, yet it doesn't bother me. You can go as far as you want, Shun. You can go away, but I know you'll come back to me.

Because we have a tie by now.

And here, on the nude rock of a steep cliff, at the peak of a dark and unfriendly island, surrounded by likely foes, strength lacking and fully helpless… for the first time in years…

… I feel safe.

**.Fin.**


End file.
